54- 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf .aQ-Sj^- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 
IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 
IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER SECOND, 1 889 



L. E. CHITTENDEN 






^ 



PRINTED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE 
BOARD OF MANAGERS 






NEW YORK 
1889 



COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY ROBERT RUTTER 



H^' 



GILLISS BROTHERS & TURNURE 

ART AGE PRESS 

400 4 402 WEST 14TH STREET, N. Y. 



BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 



J. Trumbull Smith, 

Chas. McK Leoser, 

Chas. F. Allen, 

James G. Powers, . 

Edward Schell, . 

Thomas Rutter, 
William H. Gedney, 
Zachariah Dederick, 



President. 
Vice-President. 
Vice-President. 
Recording Secretary. 
Treasurer. 
James DeLamater, 
Alexander Knox, 
Walter Shriver, 



William A. Camp. 



MANAGERS OF THE FIFTY-EIGHTH EXHIBITION. 

Robert Rutter, Chairman, 

John P. Chatillon, Vice-Chairman, 



Alex. M. Eagleson, 
Geo. Whitfield, 
J as. a. Crouthers, 
John H. Walker, 
J. W. Fellows, 
Robert H. Shannon, 



Samuel L. Marsden, 
Alex. Agar, 
John S. Roake, 
Daniel D. Earle, 
Charles Gulden, 
Richard T. Davies. 



Chas. Wager Hull, General Superintendent. 
Jno. W. Chambers, Secretary to Board of Managers. 



A CONDENSED HISTORY 

OF THE 

AMERICAN INSTITUTE 

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 

AND ITS 

EXHIBITIONS 



A FEW enterprising citizens in the year 1828 met in a small 
room in Tammany Hall and organized the American 
Institute, and in 1829 a charter was granted by the 
Legislature of the State of New York, under the title 
of the •* American Institute of the City of New York." 

Its objects are to encourage and promote domestic industry in 
this State, and the United States, in Agriculture, Commerce, Manu- 
factures and the Arts, and any improvements made therein, by 
bestowing rewards and other benefits on those who shall make 
such improvements, or excel in any of the said branches. 

Mr. Thaddeus B. Wakeman was very prominent as one of its 
founders, in fact, might be styled it father, and was its Correspond- 
ing Secretary for many years. He died in 1848. The Institute, to 
mark its appreciation of his services, erected a monument to his 
memory in Greenwood Cemetery. 

One of the principal means to accomplish its objects was the 
holding of Exhibitions, or as they were then called, Annual Fairs, in 
which Inventors, Manufacturers and others, could exhibit their 
various productions. 

The first Fair was held in 1828 in Masonic Hall, then standing 
on Broadway, nearly opposite the New York Hospital, at the head 
of Pearl Street. The Hon. Edward Everett, of Boston, delivered 
the anniversary address, which was a masterpiece of oratory. It 
was afterwards published and passed through a second edition. 



A CONDENSED HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE 7 

This Exhibition was very successful, and after holding six Fairs 
there, it was found necessary to secure more ample accommoda- 
tions. After examining various locations, Niblo's Garden was 
selected, notwithstanding great doubts were expressed as to its 
accessibility, it being deemed by many too far out of town. The 
Fair, was, however, well patronized that year, and the Exhibitions 
became very popular until the place was consumed by fire in 1846. 

Castle Garden, on the Battery, then a fashionable resort for our 
citizens, was next selected, and the Fairs were held there every Fall 
until 1853. 

The Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations was opened in 
the Crystal Palace in 1854, on Reservoir Square, in Sixth Avenue, 
between Fortieth and Forty-second Streets. After its close the 
American Institute procured it for holding its Exhibitions, which 
were held there in 1855, '56, '57 and '58, when it was destroyed 
by fire on the afternoon of October 5, 1858, with all its contents. 
This was a severe loss to the American Institute, and was thought 
by some to be its death blow. Notwithstanding this disaster, the 
managers held an Exhibition the next year in Palace Garden, in 
Fourteenth Street, on the same lots on which now stands the Armory 
of the Twenty-second Regiment. The Institute, at great expense, 
made many improvements in that building, and held Fairs in it for 
several years. 

In 1863, the Exhibition was held in the Academy of Music, 
Fourteenth Street and Irving Place. 

In 1869, the Institute secured the large structure on Third 
Avenue, between Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Streets. This build- 
ing had been erected for a Skating Rink ; to this the Institute 
have added three large buildings, the whole covering forty city 
building lots, extending from Third to Second Avenues. 

Many modest men, who would have remained in obscurity, have 
made fortunes in having their skill and ingenuity brought promi- 
nently before the public by the great facilities afforded them by the 
American Institute. 

The Exhibitions are held under the direction of a Board of 
Managers, elected annually by the members. 

The articles on exhibition are classified under seven depart- 
ments, which are again divided into seven groups. The classifica- 
tions are as follows : 

1. Departtnent of Fine Arts and Education. 

2. Department of the Dwelling. 



8 A CONDENSED HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE 

3. Departmejit of Dress and Handicraft, 

4. Department of Chemistry and Mineralogy. 

5. Department of Engines and Machinery. 

6. Department of Ditercomfftunication. 

7. Department of Agriculture and Horticulture. 

In connection with the Fairs, the American Institute has held 
eighteen Exhibitions of Live Stock from 1838 to 1859, the Exhibi- 
tions of 1857 and 1858 were confined to Fat Cattle. 

These Exhibitions were held for some years on the ground on 
which the Fifth Avenue Hotel now stands ; it was then out of 
town. On this ground stood a famed hostelry, known as Madison 
Cottage, kept by Corporal Thompson ; this was the stopping place 
for the Broadway stages. 

The Cattle Shows were also held on Hamilton Square, and on 
Hamilton Park, in Third Avenue. 

In addition to its valuable Scientific Library, there are three 
sections, viz. : 

I St. The Farmers' Club, under the direction of the Committee 
on Agriculture, which meets the second and fourth Tuesdays, at 
1.30 o'clock, p. M., at its rooms in Clinton Hall. 

2d. The Polytechnic, under the direction of the Committee on 
Manufactures and Machinery, which discusses Scientific Subjects,., 
the examination of New Inventions, etc. ; it meets at the same 
place every Thursday, at 7.30 o'clock, p. m. 

3d. The Photographic Section, under the direction of the 
Committee on Chemistry and Optics, which discusses all matters 
in relation to Photography and the action of light — this Section 
meets at the same place on the first Tuesday of each month, at. 
8 o'clock, p. M. 

All these meetings are open to the public. 

The present number of members is about 2,000. 

The Institute is governed by a Board of Trustees consisting of 
thirteen members, of which the President, two Vice-Presidents, and 
two members are retired and elected annually. 

The Institute is now holding its Fifty-eighth Annual Exhi- 
bition. 

Chas. Wager Hull is the General Superintendent, and 
John W. Chambers is the Secretary of the Board of Managers, a. 
position he has filled for fifty-five years. 



THE 

AMERICAN INSTITUTE 

OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 

INCORPORATED 1829. 

" FOR THE PURPOSE OF ENCOURAGING AND PROMOTING DOMESTIC INDUSTRY IN THIS 

STATE AND THE UNITED STATES, IN AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, 

MANUFACTURES AND THE ARTS." 

OFFICES AND LIBRARY: EXHIBITION BUILDINGS: 

CLINTON HALL, 8TH ST. NEAR BROADWAY. 2D AND 3D AVES., BET. 63D AND 64TH STS. 

New York City, October 22, 1889 



Hon. L. E. Chittenden, 
Dear Sir : 
The Board of Managers of the Fifty-eighth Annual Fair, at 
their meeting, held on Tuesday, October 8th, by a unanimous vote, 
requested a copy of the address delivered by you on the opening of 
the present Exhibition, the 2d inst, for publication. 

Very respectfully, 

Daniel R. Garden, 

Secretary pro tem. 



137 Broadway, 
New York, October 24, 1889 

Gentlemen : 

In compliance with the request in your note of the 226. inst., 
I herewith send you the address to which it refers. I have frankly 
stated to you why I do not think the address worthy of publication. 
It was necessarily prepared in the intervals of business, and in so 
short a time that no reference to authorities was practicable. Such 
conditions were not favorable to the discussion of its subject with 
the care and thought which its importance demanded. But if, 
after further examination, you determine upon its publication, I 
shall consent, with regret that I have been unable to make it more 
worthy of a permanent record. 

I have another apology to make. The time required for the 
delivery of the address was protracted by unexpected demonstra- 
tions of approval by the audience. To compensate for this loss I 
omitted the reading of the concluding paragraphs, without at the 
moment appreciating that they comprised the only reference to the 
proposed Exposition of 1892. To show that the omission was my 
own and not the fault of the managers, I request that the conclus- 
ion of the address be published as it was prepared for delivery. 
I am, gentlemen, 



To the Board of Managers of the 

American Institute, 

Daniel R. Garden, Esq., 

Secretary /r^ fem. 



Yours cordially, 

L. E. Chittenden. 



THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION IN 
THE MECHANIC ARTS 



Mr. President, Managers and Members of the American 
Institute, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

WHEN only four days ago, your managers invited me 
to make this opening address, I was about to decline 
their invitation on the double ground of want of 
time for preparation, and want of an adequate 
knowledge of the purposes of your incorporation. But my eye fell 
upon this inscription on your cards of admission, " Fifty-eighth 
Fair of the American Institute of the City of New York, Incor- 
porated for the promotion of domestic industry, in agriculture, 
commerce, manufactures and the arts." Here was provided a text, 
if not for one of the long sermons, which edified and wearied us in 
our youth, at least for that " improvement of the subject " by which 
those sermons closed. 

For that man, lawyer or layman, who cannot find an instructive 
lesson in such a text, who has not some knowledge which he can 
impart to others, of the debt which our generation owes to manu- 
factures and the mechanic arts, is ignorant beyond the common lot 
of man. I shall endeavor to show something of the educational 
value of these arts, and of the rich promise of interest and profit 
they are making to the youth of our time. The subject is broad 
and attractive — my regret is that I cannot treat it in a manner 
worthy the audience and the occasion. 

We know that there has been a pre-historic period of great devel- 
opment in the mechanic arts, of which only the product survives. 
How those huge columns, those gigantic monoliths were cut from 
the quarries of Syene — raised upon the sands of the desert, with 
records cut deep into their stone faces ; how the great tombs were 
excavated in the granitic mountains of Egypt, how jade, the densest 
mineral known except the diamond, was carved into those many 
forms of exquisite beauty, when steel and iron were unknown, and 



12 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

the best cutting edge was of bronze ; these and many other questions 
of equal importance call for answers which cannot be given ; are 
mysteries for which neither history nor science has any satisfactory 
explanation. 

Within the historic period there could not be much development 
of these arts so long as war was the chief end of man. That was 
the proper age of steel. Its weapons were miracles in metals. The 
legendary swords of King Arthur, of Wieland Smith and Siegfried 
the dragon-slayer, were not more wonderful than the blades of Da- 
mascus, or that terrible weapon which conquered the world, the Ro- 
man Sword. From the time when the fierce energy of the Scandi- 
navian blood mingled with the more stagnant fluids of the Latin races, 
after the fall of imperial Rome, the mechanic arts drooped and 
sickened, and what we call the middle ages were almost passed be- 
fore there were any substantial evidences of their revival. 

The world is indebted to the priest and the monk for the impulse 
that awoke the mechanic arts out of their sleep of centuries. Their 
earliest exhibition of improvement was in the plastic arts, in paint- 
ing and in architecture. Those who think of the monks only as 
lazy parasites, feeding their pampered appetites upon the fruits of the 
labors of an ignorant peasantry, or of the Church as saturated with 
corruption, forget those paintings before which generations have 
stood entranced — those virgins, saints and holy families, which were 
the creations of Fra Angelico — the "angelic brother." It was 
when abbeys and monks were most numerous that architecture 
reached a perfection which it has never since attained. What glori- 
ous structures were those English Abbeys, destroyed by Cromwell, 
the ruins of which attract the admiration of thousands of annual 
travellers ! What noble monuments to their cowled designers were 
those imposing cathedrals with their lofty spires, their arches of 
unapproachable grandeur and their artistic ornamentation ? But 
from pointed spire to foundation stone they were the creations of 
the Brothers of St. Augustine, St. Francis or St. Dominick. Now 
and then in a few places, great masters appeared, not always officially 
connected with the Church. But they worked for the Church which 
preserved their works. Such great masters were Adam Kraaft, Peter 
Vischer and Albert Durer in Nuremberg, and those unknown artists 
in stone who built the thirteen arches and carved the " Prentice's 
pillar " in the chapel of Roslyn. I have no sympathy with that pre- 
judice which denies to the Church, credit for its good influences, 
and is always on the hunt for its errors. It was the Church that 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



13 



kept the mechanic arts alive during the centuries of the darkest 
period of human history. All art of that time was Christian, 
That most exquisite structure ever reared by human hands the 
Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, was built by St. Louis of France, to 
preserve the relics of the true Cross. By the common judgment 
of mankind it far excels as a monument of architecture the mosque 
of Saladin or the tomb of Taj Mahal. And this wonderful struc- 
ture with its beautiful ornamentation was wholly the conception 
of a Christian mechanic of the Thirteenth Century. 

The first great modern advance in the mechanic arts covers the 
inventing of engraving and printing. These again are the products 
of the Church. It had its unworthy members, possibly they are the 
most conspicuous in history. But it also had its faithful, simple 
priests who went from village to village, from peasant hut to castle, 
teaching the poor and the ignorant great truths out of the Old 
Testament and the Gospels. They found these truths more perma- 
nent when addressed to the eye than to the ear. A picture, how- 
ever rude, of the Nativity or the Crucifixion, was remembered when 
the relations of Luke and Matthew were forgotten. How were these 
pictures to be multiplied for general distribution ? The artist and 
the mechanic were called to the work, and out of the rude products 
of the stencil-plate, they developed the great art of engraving — that 
useful, educating art which in our day has so wide an application. 
Then readers increased and the scribes could not produce manu- 
script Missals and Bibles rapidly enough to supply the demand. 
The genius of the mechanic was again called into action, and the 
great art of printing with movable types was born. So perfect was 
it that experts pronounced it the work of the devil. Since such 
work could not be produced by human, it must be by Satanic 
hands ! 

Time does not permit, nor is it necessary to our purpose even to 
sketch the further development of the mechanic arts. Enough has 
been said to indicate the smallness of their beginnings, and the nar- 
row circle which circumscribed their development, until a compara- 
tively recent period. That circle, was the circle of Christian, of 
Catholic Christian influence. Having awarded to the Church due 
credit for its conservative, progressive work, we may now turn to 
consider some of the influences of these arts upon our own genera- 
tion. 

I should not waste your evening if I could indelibly impress upon 
your minds a single but almost infinitely great fact of the present 



14 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

State of the mechanic arts. It is their prospective development in 
the early future. I do not know of any present fact of greater mo- 
ment, or which will probably produce more radical changes, or exert 
a more powerful influence upon mankind. It is before us and upon 
us. Let us give to it a few minutes of our consideration. 

We have seen a great development in these arts in our own time, 
yet the promise of their future development was never so great as 
now. Discoveries and inventions in them have been very numerous 
in the recent past ; they will be more numerous in the early future. 
I believe it is demonstrable, that they are now opening to the enter- 
prising and industrious of both sexes of the coming generation a 
field of usefulness, interest and pecuniary profit, larger and more 
inviting than all the professions combined with all the other de- 
partments of human industry. 

There are persons in this audience who would object if you 
called them old, who remember the first invention of the cooking- 
stove — when they studied '' Webster's Spelling Book " by the light 
of the tallow candle made by their mothers, who carded and spun 
and wove into cloth the wool and flax in which they Were clothed — 
when farmers and farmers' wives ridiculed machinery, and them- 
selves performed all the work of the dairy and the farm — when our 
fastest mails moved only seventy miles a day, and the canal packet 
and stage were the speediest means of travel — when the emigrant 
to the " Oswego Country," then the " Far West," called his relatives 
together and bade them a tearful farewell, for he never expected to 
see them again — when he who had safely returned from Europe was 
a mighty traveller, who had possibly heard the great English scien- 
tist declare that no ship could possibly carry fuel enough to impel 
it by steam across the Atlantic Ocean ! 

War is supposed to avail itself of the best means of destruction 
or defense. Yet at the beginning of our civil strife, except a few 
revolvers for the cavalry, there was not a breech-loading arm in the 
service — three miles was the longest range of cannon, and high ex- 
plosives were unknown. Forts with brick walls were adequate sea- 
coast defenses, and the Chief of Ordnance in our War Department 
angrily declared that the old Springfield musket, with its flint 
changed to a percussion lock, was the best arm that could be placed 
in the hands of a volunteer ! 

We have lived to see great changes. What are usually called 
two great forces running wild in the domains of nature have been 
caught and harnessed to the car of human progress. We call them 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



15 



Electricity and Steam. They have revolutionized the world of pro- 
ductive labor. They do almost all our work. With delicate fingers 
they seize the fibre of plant or animal, and through a thousand pro- 
cesses change it into clothing for our bodies and into a multitude 
of forms useful to man. With the strength of giant arms they tear 
the ores of metals from the eternal rocks below, elevate them to the 
surface, and through roaring furnace, resounding hammer, revolv- 
ing lathe and a thousand other means, turn them into engines which 
move man and the products of the earth over valley and mountain, 
across land and sea. We teach false doctrine when we call them 
two forces. There is but one force in nature. He was a great 
scientist as well as a great lawyer who first taught us that heat, light 
and force or power were convertible into each other — that the solar 
heat imprisoned in the fuel grown in cosmic ages long past, could 
at our will be converted into whichever of these three forms we 
might find temporarily useful. 

Fuel, then, is the source of all forms of heat, light and power. 
The art of converting fuel into one of these forms with the greatest 
economy is the basis of mechanical science — it is almost all there is 
of mechanical science. This is a great fact which underlies all 
mechanical progress. Let us inquire whether it is not full of prom- 
ise for the coming generations of man. 

By comparing the great inventions in the mechanic arts since 
the discovery of the great fact upon which they rest, with what may 
probably be done in the future, we may measure the field already 
occupied, and see how much of it remains to be occupied by those 
who are to follow us. Here the unthoughtful mind will certainly 
err — its possessor will exclaim that invention finished its work and 
perished before his time — that so many great inventions have been 
made that nothing remains to be discovered ! Let us inquire ! 

True it is, that ours has been a century of inventions. The 
compound, now the triple expansion marine engine drives steam- 
ships of 10,000 tons burden across the Atlantic in less than six 
days. By any one of four routes a 50-ton locomotive draws a 
passenger train across the continent in less than that number of 
days. There is not a civilized port or city on the globe with which 
we cannot communicate by telegraph in forty-eight hours. Over 
the telephone we converse with our friends 1,500 miles away. 
That wonderful art of dividing a current of electricity brings that 
beautiful illuminator, the incandescent light, into our dwellings and 
our offices. Steam performs almost all our labor. The application 



l6 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

of high and smokeless explosives will soon make wars so destructive 
that " nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." Old methods of business are superseded ; 
the merchant of the last century lives only in history. Electricity 
is becoming almost as common in its daily uses as steam. Yet with 
all these great inventions and changes, every one of which depends 
on the consumption of fuel, economy in which is the one object 
to be attained (except possibly the latest form of the marine engine), 
there is no form of using fuel known in mechanics, no machine yet 
invented to save the labor of man which does not waste five parts 
of fuel for every one that it utilizes, and the best modern locomotive 
wastes more than nine out of every ten pounds of fuel it consumes. 

Let a young mechanic go to the top of a high building in this 
city on a frosty morning. All around him he will see countless jets 
of steam darting upwards and vanishing in the air. They show 
where the equally numerous steam engines are preparing for the 
labors of the day. And every one of those steam jets is a fountain 
of power and heat going to waste. In the exhaust steam blown 
into the air, there is heat enough wasted to warm every building in 
the city, and a quantity of force of great value. 

There is the subject of mining and the treatment of metallic 
ores, always associated with human greed, always attractive to the 
mechanical inventor. There have been countless improvements 
and supposed improvements in it — it is the prevailing industry in 
several of our states and territories ; there have been inventions in 
its processes, some of them supposed to be valuable, most of them 
worthless. But with all the inventions some of the identical processes 
for the reduction of these ores of two thousand years ago are in use 
to-day. The slaves of the Caesars in the Iberian mines pounded 
their ores to the requisite fineness for amalgamation with stamps of 
the same general pattern as those which are still pounding away in 
the hills of Colorado and along the metallic belt of the Continent. 
The writings of Agricola long existed in manuscript. They were 
first printed in book form in 1555. In the first folio of " De Re 
Metallica " you will find a mining plant figured which is reproduced 
in thousands of the mines of our day. It cannot be true, I think, 
that the rude and cumbrous stamp which crushes the rock by grav- 
ity alone is the only possible or the cheapest method of reducing 
these ores to the requisite fineness. The mechanic who will invent 
a way of doing it by machinery of quick action is sure of fortune 
and a conspicuous place in future history. 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



17 



A few years ago that valuable metal, aluminium, the base of 
clays, and more universally distributed than any metal except iron, 
cost as much per ounce as silver. It could only be procured from 
an ore brought from Greenland and by a most expensive process. 
It is the lightest of metals, does not oxidize, has the color of silver 
and great tensile strength. At the cost of iron its uses would be 
innumerable. A slight admixture of it renders cast-iron malleable. 
Very recent applications of electricity have greatly cheapened its 
production. There is still room for the improvements which will 
reduce its cost to $20 per ton. We buy Bessemer steel for $30 per 
ton. Our children will buy it for $15. But to that end we must 
utilize the scores of mines producing Bessemer ores, now idle 
because the percentage of iron in their ores is too small to bear 
transportation without concentration. Where is the future inventor 
who will devise a cheap means of crushing and concentrating : of 
separating these ores from the worthless rock so that it will pay to 
send them to every furnace in the land ? Some insist that the 
invention is already made. If it is, the inventor will enrich the 
owners of these mines which are now idle, and he too will become a 
public benefactor. 

I can only mention one more of the ways to wealth and fortune 
now open to the diligent student of the mechanic arts. Some of us 
remember the discovery that electricity had any value as a force 
that could be utilized, when the inquiry, "What hath God 
wrought ? " first flashed over a metallic circuit which connected 
Baltimore and Washington, Two great events in electricity have 
since happened — the discovery of the ground circuit, and the divis- 
ion of what is called the electric current. It has given us a new 
science of electric illumination, with that most lovely of all forms 
of light, the incandescent. There has since been a wondrous de- 
velopment of the uses of electricity. Distance in communication 
scarcely exists. The telephone has reversed old methods of business. 
The actual uses of electricity are too numerous to be stated here, 
its possible uses are as countless as the wants of man. Yet the sci- 
ence of electricity is in its veritable infancy. We know electricity 
only by a few of its properties. We can handle it, see it, feel it. 
We know that it is heat, light, force ; that it pervades all nature as 
completely as the heat of the sun. We know that certain mechan- 
ism under special conditions either collects or produces it. But 
here is the limit of our present knowledge. The question. What is 
electricity ? is beyond the bounds of present knowledge. We can 



16 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

no more answer it than we can answer the question, W/ia^ is 
Life ? 

This imperfect and rather incoherent statement of only a few 
well known facts suggests the inferences I would draw from the 
present situation. If we can utilize only an inconsiderable fraction 
of the value of fuel — if our commonest processes are so prodigally 
wasteful — if inventions in the oldest and best known departments 
of mechanics, only serve to show how much still remains to be 
done — if electricity, which promises the strength of a giant in its 
manhood, is still in its swaddling clothes, what a promising, limit- 
less field of labor now is opening to the diligent student, the indus- 
trious worker in the mechanic arts? If with limited knowledge 
and opportunity so much has been accomplished, what may we not 
hope from an increased knowledge and multiplied opportunities ? 
I look confidently to the early future for the greatest development 
of these arts the world has ever seen, for a new era of discovery 
and invention, for a vast increase of human comforts, a mighty 
aggregate of human happiness. And therefore I believe these same 
mechanic arts are the most promising subjects of work and study 
that can be set before the young men and young women of our 
time. They are now giving continuous and profitable employment 
to the youth of both sexes ; they are capable of furnishing similar 
employment to as many as will submit to the conditions of their 
service, to their yoke which is easy and their burden light. 

We have lived in a favored age. Political economists teach 
that what is called " the filling up period " is the most fortunate in 
a nation's life. Such a period has been ours. Our Republic has 
been free ; our territory stretching from ocean to ocean, has com- 
prised a broad area of most fertile lands. We have been over- 
generous with them. We have opened our doors, perhaps too 
wide, and have welcomed immigration on possibly too liberal a 
scale. At all events our fertile lands are substantially occupied 
and " our filling up period " touches its close. Employments 
opened to our children will be closed to our children's children. 
" Go West, young man," no longer shows the way to station and for- 
tune. The farmer on the mountain slopes of the East will no 
longer be able to improve his wealth by a mere change of location, 
the cultivation of the soil will become more limited in area and its 
results less profitable, and the masses of the future must find other 
means of subsistence. 

Our Republic comprises only two classes of producers ; those 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



19 



who cultivate the soil and gather its products, and those who turn 
the native or cultivated products of the soil into forms useful to 
man. The first are the cultivators or farmers : the second are the 
mechanical workmen. Other classes are useful ; the professional, 
the educational, those who make and administer the laws, are indis- 
pensable to a well-ordered society. The producers may increase 
without limit for they maintain themselves ; but if the useful non- 
producers are multiplied beyond the limit of necessity, they become 
a dead weight upon the producing classes. In a well-ordered 
society there should be watchfulness against the overcrowding of 
these classes, whilst in the ranks of the producers there is room for 
all. 

And there is a great army of non-producers who have little or no 
value in society, although their avocations are in a sense reputable. 
The great army of middle men interposed between the producer and 
the consumer — another great army of men who, failing in recognized 
pursuits and having no regular business, call themselves brokers — 
the horde of speculators who swarm in the exchanges, all these who 
neither toil nor spin — must live upon those who do. When to these 
are added those who live by the trade of politics and their hench- 
men — those who patronize equally the race course and the saloon — 
the army of saloon keepers and venders of beer, and the greater 
army of the idle, the vicious and the criminal classes — when all 
these are enumerated we begin to appreciate what a mighty host of 
practical mendicants, or useless, injurious members of society all 
live upon the small minority of producers. Besides those whom 
the producer is required by family and social obligations to main- 
tain, he supports an equal number of the useless, or worse than use- 
less, non-producing classes. 

But for progress in the arts of production the producers could 
not carry their burden. For these useless classes have enormously 
multiplied in our time. Their increase must be arrested and 
their numbers diminished, or they must become tramps or starve. 

Improvements in machinery during the last half century have 
largely increased the products of labor. Almost the entire work of 
the farmer is now done by machinery or improved farming tools ; 
the same may be said of manufactures of every class. Yet the 
common laborer never earned such wages, never enjoyed such 
comforts as now. It is a heresy and a falsehood to assert that the 
laborer is injured by improvements in machinery — they have proved 
his greatest blessing. 



20 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

If then our country is best served when its capacity for produc- 
tion is increased, and its producers made influential, it seems to 
follow that there is no higher form of patriotism than that which 
makes the mechanic arts attractive and encourages their study by 
the young. This Institute requires no praise from me. Its works 
do praise it, continued now through more than fifty years. But in 
passing I cannot omit saying that the rules which govern your 
awards, and which, therefore, indicate the principles upon which the 
institute is conducted, appear to me to be models for the encourage- 
ment of the mechanic. I should feel that I had done great injustice 
to the opportunity and to myself, if I did not endeavor to increase 
the measure of that encouragement by my words. 

In all the range of politics there is no demagogism worse than 
that which teaches that capital and labor are inimical — which would 
array one against the other. It cannot be called a devilish doctrine, 
for the devil is scarcely a fool ; and he is a fool incapable of 
comprehending the interest of labor or the uses of capital who 
cannot see that they ought to be friends. 

The mechanic who thinks as he works, whose mind weighs the 
difficulties he has to overcome, often becomes an inventor. Such 
men abound in this city, they have the very highest interest in com- 
prehending the just and equitable relations between labor and 
capital. He will make a mistake fatal to his success, who under- 
values capital or fails to concede to it its full deserts. On the. 
other hand capital may lose its best opportunities of investment if 
it does not admit the full value of the inventive faculty, especially 
when it shows itself in the mind of the ordinary mechanic. 

We may look for a great increase of new and useful inventions 
in the early future. My evening would be profitably employed if I 
could influence capital to come to the assistance of these inven- 
tions, to aid in bringing them into public use upon equitable condi- 
tions. I cannot enforce my own views upon this subject better 
than by relating an actual occurrence, which I hope may make 
as permanent an impression on your minds as it did upon my 
own. 

One of the most experienced men of business I ever knew was 
for many years largely interested in the improvement, manufacture 
and sale of the sewing machine. His connection with it began with 
the invention of the eye-pointed needle — covered that long period 
of time when the mind of almost every inventor was upon that 
machine, and when sewing-machine patents multiplied at the rate 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 21 

of a thousand a year. He had been experienced in every aspect of 
patent litigation, and had made his fortune by the judicious pur- 
chase and exploitation of patented inventions. I asked him what, 
in his opinion, was the money value of an average patented inven- 
tion compared with the cost of its introduction into public use? 
His answer was that, as a rule, there were three eras in the life of a 
valuable patent — the era of experiment — of litigation — and of suc- 
cessful use. These, he said, would average about five years each. 
The inventor might think his invention perfect, but when submitted 
to the test of practical use, it almost invariably developed imperfec- 
tions which could only be obviated by experiment. The more val- 
uable a patent was, the more certain it was to be contested. In the 
average of patents in which he had been interested, two-thirds of 
the time covered by the patent had expired, before any profits were 
realized. The most valuable improvement then possible to be made 
in a sewing machine, would have no value which could be realized, 
until it had a half million of dollars put behind it. An inventor, he 
continued, who can find a capitalist who will agree to bear the cost 
of bringing his invention into public use, will always make a good 
bargain, if he can obtain the capital by parting with half his inven- 
tion — and the more valuable his invention, the better for him will 
be his bargain. The answer to your question, then, is, " one half 
the invention to the capitalist, the other half to the inventor." My 
own observation since, has confirmed the accuracy of his judg- 
ment. 

I knew another inventor who had invented an automatic tension 
for a sewing-machine. A machine which is to be operated by a 
great number of persons of all degrees of mechanical knowledge, is 
weak in proportion as its operation depends upon the operator's 
judgment. For years the tension had been the weak point in the 
sewing-machine. Its tension of the thread was regulated by the 
turning of a screw. The directions might be as minute as possible. 
B. would turn the screw a little farther than, or not quite so far as 
A. In A.'s hands the machine was a success, in B.'s it would not 
operate at all. The inventor who could take this tension from the 
judgment of the operator and make it automatic would make a most 
valuable invention. 

This inventor carried his device to one of the large companies 
for trial. After working some months and expending some 
thousands of dollars, the machinist reported in its favor and the 
company decided to adopt it, if the inventor would accept a 



22 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

reasonable license fee. Had he been content with a fee of ten cents 
a machine his invention would have been adopted, and in a few 
years have earned him a fortune. But this inventor was making 
haste to be rich — he demanded a fee of five dollars a machine, and 
would accept no less. His demand was rejected and his patent has 
never since been heard of. Automatic tensions were invented by 
others, and he sank into obscurity. 

There are possibly employers here, who need to be reminded of 
some duties which the prudent employer will find it to his interest 
not to neglect. If the inventive faculty exists in any of his work- 
men, he should cultivate it with the greatest care. Invention results 
from genius which always hungers for sympathy, and is subject to 
depression. If you have such a workman, take him into your con- 
fidence, interest yourself in his family, ascertain his circumstances 
and encourage his labors. Such treatment will pay you better than 
any other investment. In some respects inventors are weak. I 
never knew an inventor who was at the same time a good business 
man. You can supply his deficiencies in that particular. I once 
heard an inventor speak of the debt he owed to Peter Cooper for 
his counsel and assistance in the matter of a patented invention. 
Such reverential affection I never heard one man express for an- 
other. If every employer of labor was a Peter Cooper there would 
be few differences with laborers, and strikes would be unknown. 
Above all, do not deprive a poor inventor of the fruits of his inven- 
tion. There is no injustice so rankling as that. Remember that 
poor inventor in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, who in a fit of rage 
killed his employer, who he believed had unjustly appropriated his 
invention. I do not believe he was responsible, he rather deserves 
our pity. Let there be no more such scenes as that. 

I have sometimes thought that an Institute like this might per 
form a great service to mechanical invention, by having a standing 
committee of conservative, competent men, to which inventors might 
apply for gratuitous counsel and advice. What should an ordinary 
mechanic do who believes he has made a valuable invention ? I will 
tell you what scores of them are doing. Their first impulse is to 
get a patent. Before they know whether their invention has any 
value at all, they go to the patent solicitor whose work is cheapest 
and therefore the most worthless. They are always told that their 
inventions are patentable. The inventor's application is made and 
rejected. He is assured that it will cost but little to remove the ob- 
jection. He begins to devote his wages to a useless contest — he 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



23 



carries it on for a time, and finally, hopeless and discouraged, aban- 
dons his application, or sells it to a speculator for a song. I have 
known valuable inventions thus sacrificed and their inventors ruined. 
Such a committee as I have named could at least tell an inventor 
where to go for advice, and prevent his spending money to secure 
a worthless invention. 

I drop these hints, for they are nothing more, because I 
firmly believe we are now upon the very threshold of a period of 
great development in the mechanic arts, and that this Institute may 
be a powerful instrument for good during that period. From time to 
time the whole inventive faculty working in an army of individuals 
scattered over all civilized countries, is turned towards a single sub- 
ject. Just now it is turned upon electricity — the most hopeful sub- 
ject of invention I think which has ever arisen. That great results 
may reasonably be hoped for I am sure. That such Institutes as 
yours should labor to promote those results is a duty which I am 
equally certain will not be neglected. 

With another hint made, possibly, for future reference, I will leave 
this subject. We have hitherto supposed that electricity generated 
by the consumption of fuel in some of its multiple forms, moved in 
currents, the force and intensity of which could be measured. Some 
of these currents are supposed to be regular, some undulatory, all 
subject to induction and resistance. Would it not be strange if it 
should be demonstrated that electrical currents do not exist, that 
batteries, or fuel in any form are unnecessary — that electricity is 
an element which pervades nature, and will manifest itself, and will 
do our work without resistance or induction wherever we establish 
an artificial circuit for its use ? I make no predictions. I simply 
observe that I should not be surprised by such a discovery. 

Returning now to the mechanic arts, what is the lesson of the 
hour? The cheerful worker is the happiest of men ; the idle man 
is of all the most miserable. He who makes something grow where 
nothing grew before — he who makes something useful to man which 
did not before exist, is the true benefactor of his race. Let us then 
increase the number of these benefactors. Let us have the primary 
schools in which our boys shall be taught to swing the axe, to shove 
the plane, to wield the hammer and control the lathe ; our girls 
instructed with deft fingers to touch the key of the telegraph in- 
stead of the piano, to work the printing, the knitting and the sewing 
machine rather than to touch the strings of the banjo and the 
guitar. Let our boys grow to manhood with capacity to handle 



24 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

the levers of mighty engines instead of the base-ball bat ; our 
women to read the pages of nature with the eyes of science rather 
than the pages of the novel or the plates of fashion. Let us build 
institutions in which men are taught not only manufactures but 
how to make and operate the machinery which makes manufact- 
ures. Let us build nurseries of human independence instead of 
dissipation and effeminacy. For there is not a skilled worker of 
either sex who needs to feel hunger or cold, who need be idle for 
want of employment. Or if a student prefers the vocation of the 
teacher, let it be a teacher of the useful rather than of the orna- 
mental arts. It is a mark of human progress when our scientific 
schools are thrown open to both sexes, for their graduates imme- 
diately find profitable employment, and it would indeed be a marvel 
to find a well-educated young mechanic whose services were not in 
immediate demand. 

How almost infinitely brighter, then, are the promises of the 
future which open to the educated mechanic, taught to labor with 
his hands, than those of the young professional man. I would that 
I could honestly encourage the latter, for encouragement is most 
essential even in the rare cases of his success. But it is better that 
he should understand his position before he has wasted his life in 
an unavailing struggle with conditions which he cannot change, 
and while yet young enough, learn to labor. For never were 
these professions more overcrowded than at the present moment. 
There are ten lawyers, doctors and ministers where there is em- 
ployment for one. Yet our schools where they are so quickly made, 
go on turning them out by thousands every year. Now and then 
one succeeds by hard work and real ability — a few more by the 
assistance or patronage of friends. But with the many the result 
is pitiable. To live at all, they must employ means and practices 
which divest these professions of all their dignity, often of their 
respectability. They cannot marry, because they have no means 
of maintaining a family — their future prospects are no better — the 
best they can hope for is a precarious existence, eked out by any 
description of intellectual, always more wearing than manual labor. 
What is to happen if this overcrowding of the professions contin- 
ues ? I can see nothing for this great army, with its increasing 
numbers, but disappointment and failure, and, alas ! in too many 
cases, misery and crime. 

I once had my short term of official life. My apology for it is, 
that I saw my error and ended it by an early resignation. In my 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



25 



department were many clerkships with salaries ranging from $1,200 
to $1,800. These were most attractive to young men, and applica- 
tions for them were very numerous. As I am growing old it is a 
great comfort to know that I have not the sin upon my conscience 
of ever having encouraged a young man to enter the public civil 
service. On the contrary I never failed to discourage them from it 
by every means in my power. For there is no more miserable life 
than that of a government clerk, who just managing to live on his 
salary has been in office long enough to sever all connections with 
and wholly to unfit him for success in any of the walks of private 
life. He has become a dependent on his salary — to lose his office 
is to starve, and he lives in constant terror of removal. 

As I have no such wasted life upon my conscience, so I shall 
never hereafter fail to advise a young man not to enter the pro- 
fessions, if he is fitted for a life of manual labor, I would advise 
any young man to avoid Wall Street as he would the pestilence, to 
keep himself unspotted from politics,* away from the professions and 
outside the boundaries of public life, and to fit himself for a worker 
or a teacher of some one of these useful mechanic arts. Here 
there is no crowding. Here is room enough for all. Here is honor 
and respect, comfort and happiness with scores of opportunities for 
celebrity and wealth against one in the professions. 

In a struggle against the physical laws of nature or the decrees 
of its Almighty Ruler, man never wins. The primal curse pro- 
nounced against Adam reaches to all his descendants. " In the 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the 
ground." What is this but a sentence of the race to a lifetime of 
labor ? He may eat bread but it must be earned by labor, in other 
words he must labor to live, for labor is the inevitable condition of 
his existence. But instead of conforming to this condition, multitudes 
waste their lives in an effort to escape it. Why do so many of our 
young men rush blindly into Wall Street, as if a seat in one of 
the exchanges bought with the credit of their friends was certain to 
enrich them ? It is because they believe that no apprenticeship is 
required to make one a broker, that here is an employment upon 
which they can enter without those years of preparation indispensa- 



* This and other recommendations of abstention from politics, may imply a .meaning very 
different from that intended. It is the adoption of the trade— of politics as a livelihood, against 
which I protest. Voting upon election day — registration to secure the right to vote— attendance at 
primary elections to secure reputable candidates — membership in clubs and other local organiza- 
tions for political work, are among the highest duties of the citizen. I should condemn my own 
example if I should seem to excuse the disregard of these obligations. 



26 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 

ble to success in the mechanic arts. If they did not fail of success 
as they almost invariably do, it would be indeed a miracle. 

Managers of the American Institute : 

You are men of sound judgment. You have been called to 
your positions because you are experienced in affairs. I appeal 
to your experience, and I ask you, are not these wholesome truths ? 
Do they not deserve the attention of those who would lead useful 
lives of honest independence ? I have no cause to undervalue my 
own profession, but if I could live my life over again these great 
facts point the way I would go. We hear the voice of complaint 
ascending all around us. It is the voice of disappointed men. 
They say they have been unlucky, unfortunate, they have not suc- 
ceeded as well as their neighbors. There is no misfortune with- 
out a cause. Men acquire the characters and build up the reputa- 
tions to which their own acts entitle them. We are what we make 
of ourselves — the architects of our own fortunes. All men fail who 
have mistaken their vocations. They mistake their vocations be- 
cause they enter upon them blindly, without advice of their friends 
or their own consideration. 

In the broad field of the mechanic arts the harvest is indeed 
plenteous while the laborers are few. It is the field of the 
Almighty law-giver whose decrees are irresistible, whose commands 
execute themselves. His decree prohibits idleness and inaction. 
"Six days shalt thou labor" is addressed to the whole human race. 
But we have in His inspired word the assurance that " the laborer is 
worthy of his hire," that " in all labor there is profit," and that " he 
that gathereth by labor shall increase." We know " that it is easier 
for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of this law to . 
fail." 

The field of labor in the mechanic arts ! Was it ever broader or 
more promising than now ? Not the field of ignorant and blind, 
but of educated and instructed labor ! Behold how much of it 
remains untilled, yes, unexplored ; and how inviting is the narrow 
area with which we are only just beginning to become acquainted ! 
My friends, if I could induce you to accept the counsels dictated 
by a life of some experience, if I could confer upon you the greatest 
blessing I can conceive, yes, if I were a monarch who could com- 
pel you to obey his mandates and thereby ensure your own success 
— if I could speak with the authority of silver-tongued Isaiah, I 
would point you to the highway which leads to the field of educated 



IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



27 



industry in the mechanic arts, and my last injunction should be his, 
This is the way. Walk ye in it ! 

Gentlemen of the Institute ; 

I have already detained you too long, and yet there is one topic 
that I should not pass in silence. Three years hence will occur the 
four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the World of the 
West. A collection of the products of that discovery should be the 
grandest spectacle ever seen by human eyes. The opinions of two 
continents name our City as the appropriate site for its exhibition. 
It will illustrate our progress, add to our municipal reputation and 
increase our wealth. There is probably not an individual in our 
population who has not a pecuniary as well as a patriotic interest in 
the success of such an exhibition. 

Yet we may lose the great opportunity unless our whole people 
unite in the purpose to secure it and to crush all the obstacles which 
stand in its way. 

At the present moment there seems to be one such obstacle. 
It comprises the land-owners who are unwilling to permit their lands 
to be used for its selected site. If persisted in, this is serious, and 
I fear, fatal. It is suggested that the Committee having the matter 
in charge hopes to remove it by procuring from the Legislature 
authority to condemn the lands of these owners. 

This is no time to criticise the action of this Committee. Its 
members are doing a great public work, for which I fear they will 
receive no adequate reward ; but I cannot avoid saying that I doubt 
the Constitutional power of the Legislature to condemn lands for 
such a purpose or for a public park to be used for such a purpose, 
and I fear that any application to the Legislature touching the site 
of this exhibition will involve litigation and delay which will prove 
fatal to its success. 

I would suggest to the Committee that there is possibly a speed- 
ier and therefore a better way if every citizen will do his duty. 
They have determined upon the site for this exhibition. It is 
probably the best one ; at all events, we must acquiesce in their 
determination. I have faith in a vigorous public opinion. When 
a strong Committee like the present one has selected the site for 
such an exhibition, I think the public would be interested to know 
who the individuals are that will refuse their concurrence upon just 
and equitable terms. It was not wise to propose to use any portion 
of the Central Park for this purpose. That proposal is now under- 



28 THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 

Stood to have been finally abandoned. Now let the Committee go 
on and lay out the exterior boundary of the lands necessary for the 
purpose. Let them secure the consent of every public-spirited land- 
owner who will agree to the use of his lands upon fair terms. Then 
let them make a second list, of those who will not consent to such 
terms. The public wants to see that second list. The name of 
every individual in it will become a subject of interest. We ought 
to know who the land-owners are who intend to live and own prop- 
erty in this City and yet who are selfish enough to refuse the use of 
their lands for such a purpose upon equitable terms. If the Com- 
mittee will make that list, they need not concern themselves further. 
The press and the public may be safely left to deal with the individ- 
uals. 

The claim has been made that some of these lands are held in 
trust, which will not permit their use for such a purpose. There is 
not much foundation for this claim. So long as only the use 
for three or four years is involved, the courts will find some way to 
justify the Trustees in co-operating in such a public purpose, should 
any such case arise. 

It is not in human nature, with all its selfish instincts, to persist 
in opposition to such a great public enterprise, when fair compensa- 
tion is proposed, for the use of the property involved. When it is 
found that no speculation in these lands will be tolerated, one after 
another of these owners will unite with public-spirited citizens, and 
in the end opposition will disappear. 

There is then no cause for discouragement. The City of New 
York has determined to have this exposition. The Committee 
should go straight on with their work. Every citizen should do all 
in his power to support them. In such a public matter nothing is 
more powerful than a good example. These are becoming very 
numerous, and are announced almost daily in the public press. I 
do not believe there is any necessity for any application to the 
State Legislature. Two additional months of the successful labor 
which the Committee has so far performed will secure the site for 
the exposition, and leave us in a position to apply to Congress for 
the necessary National contribution at the opening of the December 
Session. 



THE VALUE OF INSTRUCTION 
IN THE MECHANIC ARTS 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER SECOND, 1889 



BY 



L. E. CHITTENDEN 



^ 



PRINTED UNDER TH£ DIRECTION OF THE 
BOARD OF MANAGERS 



NEW YORK 
1889 



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